An O.A.P.'s view of everything.

Monthly Archives: June 2010

The cracks, in the ‘cuts’ side of the condem method of funding the country, become apparent as police chiefs etc. suggest many thousands of constables jobs will have to go as a result. The thought of ‘no’ police is already frightening many of the sheep at the mail and beeb boards. (Mind you they’ve had the jitters at the beeb for yonks – things getting close to home perhaps!)
Ditto the nhs. Ditto education. Ditto everything as the whole scam just becomes yet another huge tax-hike.
Apparently too (mail) from next April ‘The Work Programme’ will force folk off the dole and into paid work. This will be done by ‘private companies’ that, as they get people jobs, will be paid ‘thousands of pounds’ by tax-payer funding. So they’re not really private companies – they are, simply jobcentres. So what’s new? As ever the sheer cost of a scheme will be greater than it’s saving. And will taxation be lowered as a result? No prizes.
But, as a single, tiny, glimmer of hope in this mess of deficit and debt I simply ask myself, ‘What could thousands of highly qualified Policemen, Nurses, Doctors, Teachers actually do as their public payroll no longer can afford them?’
And, as ever, Logic brings an answer:
Could they not Police, Heal, Teach from a Private viewpoint? If not why not?
Also in the mail that nice Mr. Cable now hints that the car industry (?) will get no more funding or bail-outs from government coffers…..
…despite the car-industry helping to fill ’em in the first place! To me ‘Nothing Out’ should go hand in hand with ‘Nothing In’ – fair’s fair.
(But no wages for Mr. Cable in that equation! Never mind Mr. C. it’s tough getting any job at our age – but soon there will be The Work Programme to look forward to!)
Meanwhile the yellow stuff ever rises to new heights. Any time now a pan and a country stream will become viable.
🙂

Apparently those naughty bankers are going to be forced to keep large stocks of ‘good-quality’ cash around in order that another banking-crisis can be avoided. They say that doing that will saddle them with another £4,000,000,000,000.00p in yearly costs!
So it looks like banks will price themselves off the market for most folk making cash once again king.
And, The Borrowers above will know just where to look for that swift few £trillion when the pot runs dry…….they’ve already ear-marked a banking super-tax for instant oblivion.
(Apparently this Canadian shindig will instantly obliviate about $1,000,000,000.00c by the time they’ve done. Frightenin’ eh?)
Yet Steph at the beeb reads all sorts of ‘common-sense’ into it.
Ahhhh, the funded life.
And Ossie is after all those naughty incapacity benefits cheats by having umpteen ‘fitness’ checks all the time. He’s looking to save £millions by doing this………so ahem, will our income-tax actually be reduced as a result?
It’s doubtfull – the cost of doing all this might even render the idea runs at…wait for it…a loss!
Oh dear!

The mail’s car pundits and ‘testers’ all seem to label the various electric cars as…well, rubbish to be honest. Yet today further tax-payer funding for Vauxhall’s (GM) electric attempt is unveiled at the mail’s site. The tax-payers will too, it seems, fund the installation of umpteen ‘charging-points’ around the country and somehow the cars will be subsidised to the tune of £5,000 apiece. The Vauxhall car to be made in GB costs about £25,000.00p and some poll suggests that 1 in 8 New-Car buyers will buy early to evade the new vat levels…
Recently Nissan also got a similar tax-funded bribe.
Strangely, I once again see airfields, rather than our roads, full of these iffy electric wannabe’s.
(Meanwhile Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Aston-Martin struggle against their ‘Waiting-Lists’.)
I can only use the one word – ‘Misguided’ followed by the wail of the easily led flock…….
Baaaaaaaaa!!
That nice Mr. Duncan-Smith suggests that tax-payer-funded folk upsticks and move from council-funded homes in order to ‘go Private’ and actually earn a living where there is work.
Many would love to do that Mr. S. But what happens to the council-house they leave behind? And, shouldn’t you then have to practise what you preach?
But, on a more upbeat note, it’s really nice having politicians that actually admit that in some areas there really are NO JOBS
Real bummer that eh?
Peter Hitchens, at the mail, has finally got the message about the ‘Cuts Crisis’.
Wonder if he was illumed so suddenly from here? He’ll be writing the word: Baaaaa! next!
Still, better late than never – but do try to keep-up chuck!
Robert Peston at the beeb writes:
“At issue are three different but related prophylactic measures for the banks, that are being prepared by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, for eventual agreement towards the end of this year by the G20.
They are:
1) How much pure loss-absorbing capital should be held by banks in proportion to a risk-weighted measure of their assets?
2) How little of banks’ finance should come from unreliable short-term wholesale sources?
3) How binding should a backstop “leverage” rule be, that would put a ceiling on each banks’ gross unweighted assets as a multiple of their core equity capital?”
Ah! The public-sector! (Where, apparently, 46 government web-sites have cost £94,000,000.00p to build with £32,000,000.00p staffing costs)
Anyway, back to Atlas Shrugged, it’s really good. It sort of explains wot that nice Mr. Peston is on about!

Better late than never the beeb site finally mentions the ‘up-and-coming’ crisis of a water shortage. It’s usually worst in the north and united utilities (no, they don’t warrant capital letters) are already applying for legal powers to impost hose-pipe-bans. Apparently, at the beeb site, the reason for the shortage (no, not too many taps) is that they – the water companies – do not have any aquifers – underground water storage facilities.

In other words building such has never been contemplated and Pricing such into bills, over the years (a few pence per bill?) has never been done, or we would have had aquifers.

So therein methinks is goodly excuse for massive water-bill Price hikes anytime now – ‘…to fund some aquifers…and we’ve not had a pay-rise for oooh…six months…’

Again Bistoicus Tramicus rears – despite the apparent intent of the newly more-or-less elected! How luxurious is the public path – with it’s sheer contempt of basic business and it’s reliance on ‘pay‘ regardless!

Here’s a little snippet from the Z-Files. Those cash-strapped first-time-buyers might just have a giggle with this….and this is a FREEBIE!

About Buying a House the first time.

Years ago, when I was 23, I managed to get my own home and by the time I was 28 it was paid for! Yep. Then it was quite an achievement but by no means unusual – today doing such would seem to be IMPOSSIBLE.

The advice given to FTB’s lately seems to be more like sales-blurb from the vast army of bankers eager to lend their raw-material at top-of-market rates. So here’s a few pointers from an UN-biased source – from one in fact MUCH MALIGNED, over the years, by the greedy, money-grubbing conglomerates that pass as ‘Local Banks’.
So there will be no discussion of the various ‘mortgage type’ here – they are all designed to extract, from a borrower, the MAXIMUM interest on the SMALLEST loaned capital sum. I.E. Usuary at it’s basic and devilish worst. Not to mention the PUNITIVE measures taken against folk that dip into the red now and then. And once dipped it is almost impossible to surface because of the charges imposed.
So advice here of a different kind. That of an investor rather than a borrower.

But, take a look at house prices. I mean a CLOSE look. On the face of things here in the north of England, I’m going to need about £100,000.00p in order to get a FTB style terraced…..but that’s on the face of things. And I’m not looking here for the sort of house a developer buys at auction – I’m looking at clean and liveable from day one.

But again, looking more closely, I do find a few homes for considerably less than that initial mind-numbing £100,000.00p. In fact I’d say somewhere between £50,000.00p and £100,000.00p is more the mark.
So let’s put a figure of £75,000.00p for a house purchase. (More on EXACT price later)

Faced with such a figure many FTB’s would simply try and book a spot on Deal Or No Deal or buy a shedload of lottery tickets! But these are ‘luck’ based cash-generation methods and, although possibly lucrative, need to be part of the planning if they’re to be used. And therein is the secret of ANY cash purchase – that one word – PLANNING.
Planning is the secret to any cash deal. But say ‘Start to plan’ to a FTB and they’ll probably just draw-up a list of mortgage-lenders with their telephone numbers.

No. I meant Planning from a Business context. Planning entrepreneur style. Take a look at The Rich Lists, or most daily papers. Stories about celebs etc. with wads of cash……..well, how far would any of them have gotten if someone hadn’t planned it all for them? In the case of The Rich Lists many so named did their own planning – the plans to get a home probably just a MINOR irritation amid the main Business-Plan(s) that they must have had.
With any plan there are two main criteria. 1) Cash. 2) Time.

Everything else either falls under one of these or is outside the maths and can be shelved as far as planning goes. So, we have an idea of the cash aspect – £75,000.00p. So we just need to plug-in a realistic TIME frame as you might say. (At this stage you could, if not already doing, ear-mark a set, weekly amount for lotteries – it’s not ’scientific’ but who cares.)

For a time-frame I’d suggest two years. For a young couple, both working their butts off, getting say £10,000.00p plus, in a bank-account as a mortgage deposit, might take two years. Possibly one, but planning is best done cautiously at the start. You can amend later if all goes well.

But here we’re not interested in DEPOSIT, we’re interested in total capital sum. So two years is quite plannable.
£75,000.00p is a huge sum. A frightener for a youngster. And, to be honest I have to make it even more scary by adding to it about 25%!!
Say another £20,000.00p. That’s a monster £95,000.00p. Might as well call it £100,000.00p.

Yep.

Really scary now. But to cut that huge, impossible figure down to size the entrepreneur would simply bring his Time Frame to the rescue. Two years. So, in reality, the cash becomes £50,000.00p per year – which is slightly less daunting.

And £50,000.00p per year is just (approx.) £4,170.00p per month, or (approx.) £1,050.00p per week, or (approx.) £27.00p per hour. (40 hour week)(And I’ve based this on 12 months of 4 weeks per month – the additional four weeks per year are of course holidays! Take one!)

Are you scared now?

No?

You can pull £27 per hour cleaning windows for gawds sake!

The added 25% was to allow for basic income-tax. And all figures are rounded up – you could afford at least 10 lottery tickets per week. Include their weekly cost in your cash requirement calculations and they’re bought from Profit rather than adding to any Loss. (Simples eh?)
And a £75,000.00p house might be bought for £70,000.000p or less with a cash-offer…
…mind you, after all that graft you might fancy (another) holiday!

I more or less did this all those years ago! Mind you, my first house cost just £575.00p! But then weekly wages were about £15.00p. A different world eh?
🙂

As mentioned yesterday the next crisis will be ‘water’ and, due to a dearth of crisis, the mail has already started on it.
The problem is, as you can see in the photo, the extra distance you have to trudge in order to dump that bike or asda trolley. A real downer!
Not to mention the hardship encountered by folk that have to fish-out those weed-covered bikes, do ’em up and eventually flog ’em!
Mind you, things will be made easier – a lot less plod about I read!
The mail also has an article telling us that a family with an income of £50,000 and one with an income of £100,000 will both be worse-off by about £700.00p – is this fair?
‘Fair’ doesn’t enter into it. The £100,000 family may be the £50,000 family’s employers!!! who may be employing scores of £50,000 families! At todays tax levels providing employment is on a knife-edge….one false move………………
Steph at the beeb writes today:
“I’m sitting in the bowels of the University of London building listening to Robert Chote dissect Mr. Osbornes Budget….”
Were there no tax-funded meal tickets no one would sit, or listen, or dissect or budget and, no bowels.
…yet they want to cut Policemen, Nurses, Bin-Men, Doctors perhaps….
Bistoicus Tramicus!
No water-shortage in Singapore it seems.

Well, that’s it. All that gloom and doom was mainly to get that 20% vat measure in (eu parity?) and to lower significantly the 40% tax-rate limit; the day when all pay at this higher rate is probably already ear-marked!!
The other stuff was smokescreen. And, so far, not a ‘cut’ in sight! Oh, there are plenty talked about but they’re for later. A good strike or two should water them down a bit. So no cuts in the size of government i.e. actual numbers of persons ’employed’ directly by government.
Result of all this?
Nothing. Higher revenues cancelled-out by company closures and job-losses. Less services for the same – or even MORE money = the standard method of devaluation that’s been happening for years.
Anyway, gotta go. I’m on the lookout for a job paying less than £7,500. They’ll be like gold now – no income tax and a shedload of tax-credit! Oooh! I never thought, I’ve already got one of those!

All this stuff is supposed to rid us of the deficit in about five years. So, if that works, will the various ’emergency budget’ measures be rescinded?
Baaaah!
********* ************ ************* **********
The next ‘crisis’ will be water. Already the mail has before and after pictures of some obscure ‘river’ that, due to a days hot weather, has apparently dried-up.
It’ll only be a ‘mini’ crisis compared to the deficit crisis but may well result in many sheep actually begging the ‘water-companies’ to raise their charges! (water-rates).
🙂

It is indeed. Today’s the day when those of us that have to set Price – as a business concept – do so for the next public-sector ‘year’.
The thing is; Price is impossible to set without a year’s data about various other business concepts. One such concept is taxation and today the public-sectors financial leader will spell-out the new taxation levels to be imposed on both the public and Private sectors. Once this data is in – later today – I can again ‘set my Price’ for any work that I need do. It is, in effect, a task with a set formula and is quite straight-forward. It is in no way any form of ‘crisis’.
But, as ever, since I can remember, every single public-sector budget-setter has had a ‘crisis’ set of figures to deal with – like a pre-set scape-goat for the (surety of) failure to come.
But so far, none have ever, as far as I can recall, used the formula; prefering, it seems, the iffy modus of luck.
Nick Robinson of the beeb says today at the site, “Some good news has emerged from the treasury tonight. The budget will take 880,000 (people) out of the tax system.”
Their share, then Nick, will be paid-for by ‘someone else’?
Luckily this only refers to the ‘income-tax’ part of the system. They still have to buy a tv licence! (Oooooh! Can’t cut that!!)
Good news sunshine is, as you now see, relative.
By the way Nick, shouldn’t you be at South Africa, Wimbledon or Glastonbury this week? Everyone else is – it seems.
A small job via Thomson today…………….and now Price can be reasonably set.
Watch unemployment figures. Vat and vat rises are major cause – always have been.They hit everyone.

I was immediately drawn to the Russia/Belarus gas-cutting-off-story in the beeb today.
Russia is cutting the gas-supply to Belarus because of non-payment of gas-bills. The Russian President has said, ” Gazprom cannot accept debt payment in anything, be it pies, butter or cheese…”

Ooooh! I’m off to Oxfam to get something woolly and warm for winter – well, do we actually make anything in gb? Not that it would be the slightest use in the real world. To pay gas-bills you need cash. And to generate that you need……………

(“Try our authentic Belarusian foods wherever you are with a Belarusian Pie Pack. Each pack contains four Belarusian Pies – with FREE Butter and Cheese!
Also included is a 20 page booklet entitled: ‘Making pies the Belarusian way’. Yes, learn the secrets of cooking without gas! Special introductory offer: Four Pie Pack just 50 Roubles inc. P&P.”)

………..Marketers. But they don’t exist do they?

****************** ******************** *******
On the home front in the Mail, Ossie says,”…I want to support the person who leaves their house at six or seven in the morning, goes out and does perhaps a low paid job in order to provide for their family and is incredibly frustrated when they see on the other side of the street the blinds pulled down and someone sitting there and living on a life on out-of-work benefits….”

I did just that for 50 years Os. It’s great. But now, who will provide (even) that low-paid job? And who, right-mindedly, can knowingly graft all hours just to render his/her family up to the eyeballs in credit-card(?) debt after about half of said ‘low-pay’ is forcibly confiscated by one tax after another.

Meanwhile, I sit, with the blinds pulled down so I can see me monitor, struggling to pull a £ from a national market without any buying-power.
Yet certain folk whinge and argue about lottery-win-sized ‘expenses’ and trillion pound ‘pension’ back-holes…

Why not Os, practise what you preach eh? See you down the car-boots sunshine – they kick-off at six………nice to have your support.
Benefits? Nah! Too complicated old chuck!
🙂
************** ****************** ***************
Apparently The Church of England (oh yes, capital letters!) is going to sell-off its BP shares…
Their spokesman left the order to sell, carved onto stone tablets, that were placed on a mountain.
The area is being searched for any ‘BUY!’ tablets – so far, apparently, without success.
Alleluia!
🙂

Misguided. That’s the polite term used for folk that bugger things up. And, next week should see in the first budget ‘designed’ (?) to cut costs and ease a massive deficit in the public-sector.
I read this morning that libdem man – that nice Mr. Russell – is worried that the budget may affect “…the poor and disadvantaged…”

(Fear not Mr. Russell, the Self -Employed will struggle on regardless!)

Mr. Russell says he’d like, “…assurances that this government will protect the poor – particularly 3.9 miilion children who are below the poverty-line.”

At the moment every child in this country is below the poverty-line and then some!

But fear not! I also read that for new company start-ups, the first ten new employees, will pay no n.i. for the first year.

Wow! That measure alone should totally invigorate the Private Sector into glorious and deficit-obliterating action.

Not.

Misguided see.

Why?

Take a look at that n.i. ‘measure’ above. It presupposes that someone else will do the actual ‘starting-up’.
How refreshing it would be to read, that some m.p. somewhere actually practised what he or she preached; gave-up the cushy work-or-play lottery-win-sized funded income for life and opted for ‘poor and disadvantaged’. How nice, in fact, to have such a choice – as some of us here simply do not.

I read all the time the comments at reply-boards that say, in various ways, ” We need more (Private-Sector) jobs!!”

Of course. You can never have too many. But again, the misguided search in vain for that mystical ‘someone-else’, able to create/provide those jobs.

Yet, really, creating such in the abundance suggested by our esteemed but misguided(?) budget writers (‘..the first ten…’) is not in any way neccessary.

To totally reverse the fortunes of this country, surely, any new? job-creator need create only one job.

His or her own.

If he or she gets busy and needs a hand, well, that’s how new (Private Sector) jobs are created.

Simples eh?

The first thing you do is write to your tax-office and tell them that you intend to set-up as Self-Employed. Every benefit, every cent, will cease. You’ll get a huge bagfull of bumf about tax to wade through – informing you – right at the outset – of the ‘fines’ for non-compliance and evasion, the jail-terms for employing illegals on the side. What you get for a class 2 n.i. stamp (bog-all) and when you have to pay class 4 as well. You also get a tax-office cd that’ll probably wipe the drive on your pc (or worse!!). etc.
All this is doubly frightening when you suddenly realise that it’s you that pays for it all!

And you probably smiled when I wrote alluding to the Self-Employed being ‘poor and disadvantaged’!